Flash Archives

WRESTLEGY by Timothy Parfitt

September 15, 2019 · Creative Nonfiction

We met under the spotlights, cast as Macduff and Banquo in our high school’s production of Macbeth. Alex and I became fast friends. We goofed around a lot back stage, smoked a little weed in the alley. My big moment was when I got to run onstage and yell “horror” until the word lost meaning. When the production was over, Alex invited me to join him and his other upperclassman friends in their backyard wrestling league. Boys playing dress up, immortalizing our daring feats on a bulky 90s camcorder. I played a janitor in coveralls and wielded a mop. We fell on each other from great heights, a mattress or trampoline underneath us. If you do it right, it’s a kind of embrace.

Dark Arena. Ring stands empty.

Into the light dances a myth,

purple feathered boa wrapped around torso.

Pink boots a stompin’.

Larry Sweeney barrels down the aisle

and dives between the ropes of the ring,

bounces to his feet, taunts the crowd,

delights in their jeers, flexes, preens.

His shoulder-length bleach blond hair is wet,

droplets rain with every whip of his head.

We stayed friends but never became close ones, even after I followed Alex to the same Midwestern college. After graduating, Alex moved to Pennsylvania to train with Ring of Honor. That’s where he created Larry Sweeney. I followed his career from afar, got Facebook invites to his matches when he was in town. He doggedly pursued his art, something I admired and even envied. Mine was an idealized notion of Alex. I only heard about the rest later, after he killed himself. Barthes said “In wrestling, a man down is exaggeratedly so, filling the spectators’ entire field of vision with the intolerable spectacle of his powerlessness.” Alex lived to put on a show, so to mourn him, so will I. Good taste is never of paramount importance, least not in wrestling. Book an arena of the mind. Reanimate the dead. Print fliers. Spread the word: a rematch.

Good evening!

What a treat we have in store for you tonight.

Re-birth, Re-venge. The Re-turn…of

Sweet ’n‘ Sour Larry Sweeney!

Close up of Sweeney’s face in pain.

He takes his pink aviators off.

Then puts them back on.

More, More, More demands Larry’s theme music.

When a friend kills themselves, there is no ref to whom to appeal. I read online that Larry hanged himself from the turnbuckle of a ring in Louisiana, that it was his parents who found him. “Unnatural” is a word people use when parents bury their children. Kayfabe is the concept in wrestling that the shared fantasy created in the ring is a code and that the characters and stories created in the ring are sacred. Reality outside the ring, once acknowledged, betrays the fantasy created within it. To “break” kayfabe is wrestling’s greatest sin.

Venue change: Starbucks.

Behold Alex, gravel-voiced bipolar disturbance.

He delivers a kick! to the plate glass window

then stays to kick and kick

until the shatterproof glass comes down.

Stays long after

the baristas call the police.

Rematch implies the possibility of changed outcome. Alex is gone but some version of him (Larry?) kicks around my head. I hate movie suicides, the sad minimalist piano music, the familiar storm clouds and pockets full of stones. I watch dedications online, teary bloggers recount what they all agree was his low point.

Toyota Center Parking Lot:

Shaky camera work,

an opponent named the UK Viper.

Fans getting a chance to mix it up

with a fallen star.

Alex is a manic

and good-natured ringleader.

Tractor trailers in the background.

Halfway between Alex and Larry,

switching back and forth.

When the amateur announcer calls him Larry,

he stops him, and speaks of the name his parents gave him.

I track down and speak to a man who shot the video, who documented what others describe as the zenith of Alex’s unchecked mania. Aaron was a kid skipping school when he met Larry in a McDonalds down the street from the arena. Over the course of that afternoon, Alex became something like a mentor to him. Aaron was the “promoter” of that improvised parking lot match witnessed by a dedicated handful. No one had believed in him like that before. Before what I saw in the video was a tragedy, a fallen star vamping for attention and beer money. After talking to Aaron, I remember Alex could be plain fun. So many known and recorded versions of Alex: artist, friend, inspiration, danger to himself and others, suicide.

Crackling audio of Alex discussing

the awakening that sealed his departure

from Ring of Honor:

“The sky parted ways.

They opened up.

I don’t know how else to describe it, man.

It was like God

staring directly into me

and through me and

I was looking back at him.”

In his own words, 2009, the year of the parking lot match, was the worst of his life. A qualifier though, when he speaks of it, one that haunts me. He calls it the “worst event of my life, up to this point.” “Up to this point” is probably just Alex being realistic, life is a series of hurdles, but to me it sounds expectant. I track down Aine, one of the witches from Macbeth. They never dated-dated, but he was her first kiss. Back then I thought he walked on water, she says. She tells me of the time Alex drove halfway across the country based on a message he heard within the “Jesus Christ Superstar” soundtrack. How far do the dead plan ahead? He would have done big things in the big leagues.

Sweeney kicks a tombstone into an open grave,

then begins to shovel.

Breaks free, jumps upon the turnbuckle,

makes the international gesture for suck it.

Fireworks punctuate the gesture.

From my spot on the mat,

I regard the figure on top of me,

monster stitched together from Youtube,

memory and daydream.

Surely this is not Larry, much less Alex.

Once he was gone, Alex became a sinking feeling. Instead of making sense of his death, I wallowed in the messiness of it, got lost in the versions of him that live online. Dying in the ring made him myth. Reanimating him has done little to make the spectacle of his death tolerable. My imagination has failed me.

A flicker passes across his eyes,

recognition perhaps,

or resignation.

He jumps, sends his feet

out in front of him, cocks his elbow,

his hair streaking in the wind.

It’s a very interesting question,

though only one person who can answer it.

The man under that big black hat.

Credits roll, time marches on.

Tune in next time.

Larry elbow drops into the ether.

I remember his bark of a laugh. Put the various versions of him away. I’ve been grappling with him so long fantasy has dried into memory. What a poor promoter I was. None vanquished, no new storylines to pursue. If anyone real were involved were my checks would have bounced. I miss Alex. I close the browser windows.

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QUEEN OF THE BEES by Juniper Tubbs

September 11, 2019 · Fiction

Today, naturally, I saved the bees.

Let me be clear - today I read that the bees are going extinct. I also read on the internet that if you put a bee in your freezer, it won’t die, it’ll just become very, very tired and then go to sleep. Then, if you warm it up a little bit, it’ll fly off without a care in the world. I hope you can see where I’m going with this.

I gathered the most beautiful lilacs and freesias, the most gorgeous orchids and begonias and zinnias; and threw them all in a pile in the back yard. Flowers of colors and hues that I couldn’t even understand, but I knew the bees could. A billion, buzzing fuzzy little bodies, whizzing through the wind, sniffing out my flowers. I took my biggest butterfly net and caught them all, waving it through the air like a flag, a flag that says yes, I am saving the bees, and I am proud. One by one I set them soundly in my kitchen freezer. I always thought that when a bee snoozed, they gave little shudders. They don’t, and I’m disappointed.

I imagine that when someone asks what happened to the bees, I’ll tell them the facts. That the bees aren’t going extinct, in fact, I have them all, and they’re safe and sound, dozing softly in my home. That, in fact, I saved them, and that they can’t die in my freezer because there’s no pollution in my freezer. Only bees. And they’ll say, wow, Cassia, you must be the queen of the bees. And I’ll reply with confidence, that yes, in fact, I am.

I want to knit them tiny blankets, but the bees are too small, so I settle for building them little mahogany beds, with snipped satin sheets and down feather pillows. As I pick up the bees and tuck them in, I say to them wow, bees, you’re living better than me. But I swallow my envy, because bees are hard workers, and I am not. I’m only a temp worker with a job to do.

I wonder what to feed the bees when I wake them up from their slumber. Do bees drink honey matcha tea? Or is grapefruit and açai berry yogurt a better breakfast for them? I realize, horridly, that I do not know how to care for bees. I am queen of the bees, but I am not mom of the bees. I wonder if their bee-mom ever fed them peanut butter sandwiches with agave nectar before going to bee-school because their bee-dad was away at bee-war, like my human-mom did. I decide, probably not, because I don’t think bees like peanut butter.

I look up how to care for bees, and I realize I’ve made a grave mistake. Bees, when nestled in tiny mahogany beds and satin sheets in the freezer will only snooze soundly and happily for so long. Then, they will die. I’m coming for you, bees! I cry out. I take them out of my freezer, one by one as fast I can, and set them on my kitchen table in the sun. I worry that the bees will hate me now. I worry that I was not democratically elected as the bee-queen, and that the bees will have a mutiny, and use their little bee-guillotine to chop off my human head. I think I am in the clear, because a bee-guillotine isn’t big enough to chop off a human head. I tie them all on strings, just to be safe.

I decide to bake the bees apology cookies for when they awaken. I use honey, oats, and a good helping of vanilla, because I only want the best for the bees. I am not good at baking, but I hope they understand the thoughtfulness of the actions and do not chop off my head.

When the bees begin to wake up, I grab the ends of all the strings. I ask them to calm down; tell them that I made cookies and I can make hot chocolate for them too if that sounds nice. But they buzz and buzz, and they start to fly at the windows. I am reluctant, because I do not think the bees understand or appreciate the kindness of my gesture, but after some persistence and well thought out rhetorical buzzing from the bees, I relent. Fine, bees, we can go outside. But I’ll have you know that I worked really hard on those cookies.

When I take the billion bees outside, they fly all around, buzzing like an orchestra that’s mainly composed of clarinets, and maybe an oboe or two. They sound happy, I think, and I consider that maybe I am a good bee-mom after all, that maybe after their bee-moms died from cancer, like my human-mom did, they needed a kind but stern maternal figure in their life. They start to fly towards the sky, and I feel lighter and lighter.

When I feel my feet lift off the ground, I start to cry. Is this the democratic process? I ask. Have you voted me in as your new bee-queen? The bees buzz and zooz, which I do not think is a word, but sounds correct. As we soar through the air towards their bee kingdom, I give my acceptance speech. Yes, I will be your queen, I say. Yes, I will serve the common bee-good for years to come. And never, I say, will I leave.

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MIND WHAT’S GOOD by L Mari Harris

September 9, 2019 · Fiction

The girl sits on her old teeter totter in the backyard, eating mini marshmallows out of a bag. Pushes off. Crick. Down. Crick. Pushes off again. Crick. Pork Chop the Chihuahua watches each marshmallow go from fingers to mouth, cocking one eyebrow, then the other.

A man in a black suit and hat walks down the alley. It’s early August, 98 degrees. He has something in his hand.

“Hey, Mister! What’s in your hand?”

The man stops at the fence and holds a hammer and a bar of soap up.

The girl and Pork Chop stare. Mrs. Potter from three houses over once walked through the alley carrying a squawking chicken she was going to turn into a nice soup with noodles and carrots and celery, but that was about as weird as the girl had ever seen.

“Why you wearing that hot suit?” The girl scratches Pork Chop behind his little ears. The tiny dog leans into her hand, shivers with contentment.

The man smiles and leans his forearms on the fence. “Would you like to hear the Word of God?”

“You a preacher or something?”

“Something like that. I help people, showing them God’s goodness and grace.”

“How you find them?”

“They tend to find me.” The man juggles the hammer and the bar of soap to his other hand, pulls a handkerchief out, wipes his brow.

The girl sees her best friend by the trees. Maggie?

The girl and Maggie, flip flops slapping on the sidewalks, giggling, arms draped around each other’s shoulders or waists, eyes down when the older boys would rev their engines and shout as they roared by, then giggling again, clutching their arms, the downy hairs tingling. Then, the girl’s daddy already downstate, springtime, one of the older boys stopping as she walked along the road, offering a ride, No thanks, offering it again, No, really, I’m almost home. Next day, girls laughing, boys pointing, one sticking his finger in her face, We hear you’re a good time. Everyone laughing, the girl cutting through backyards, missing her big bear of a daddy who still called her Princess Sunshine, missing her momma who's distracted from working three jobs, missing her best friend who called her trash as the girl ran out the school doors.

The man in the suit turns and looks. “See someone?”

“No, guess not. Mister, you haven’t said what you’re doing with those things.”

“Why, to do my washing and build a house for the Lord.”

The girl hears a saw start up in the garage. Daddy?

The girl’s daddy, building her a bookcase on their last weekend together, the girl sitting on a milk crate, watching, listening over the buzz of the saw and pounding of nails. Made a stupid mistake, baby. You mind what’s good and you won’t go wrong. But make sure it’s the good you’re hearing. That’s where I got it wrong. The girl wrapped her arms around her daddy and didn’t let go until her arms went numb.

The man in the suit cocks his head. “Hear something?”

“No, guess not. You got a long ways to go? You thirsty, Mister?”

“No, thank you. I’m on my way to Redemption. I was told it’s just up the way a bit, past the edge of town.”

“Past Mr. Elwood’s dairy farm?”

“So I hear.”

“What’s this Redemption look like?” The girl wonders if it’s a town she’s never heard of or maybe that church out on Hwy B where talk is they play with snakes and fall to the floor. She hopes it’s not that.

The man in the suit drums his fingers on the gate, furrows his eyebrows. “Horses with velvet-soft muzzles tickling your palm for sugar cubes. Lilac bushes big as houses. No fighting. Fresh sheets on your bed every night, and the smell of bacon frying every morning. No one ever has to go away or find themselves alone, because there are no mistakes and no lies. All the ice-cold lemonade and chocolate donuts and French fries with extra ketchup you could ever want.”

She loves it all.

Pork Chop jumps up and down, wagging his little tail. He loves it all too. The girl and the man both laugh. She scoops up Pork Chop and walks toward the gate. She wants to see this Redemption for herself.

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LOVE RUNS AWAY TO JOIN THE CIRCUS by Kieron Walquist

September 4, 2019 · Fiction

The Ringleader lets the circus run itself into the ground, unsupervised. Ever since the accident, he hides himself in his trailer. Away from the police, the press, the public. All who lie in wait outside, hunched and hungry. Ready to ambush. Ready to accuse: how could you let this happen? Confined by choice, the ringleader doesn’t eat much. Drinks religiously. Sleeps. Occasionally peeks behind the dusty blinds at the sun. You stay with him in his misery. Longing to be loved. But he refuses to want you. Says: you don’t belong in the circus! Go home. You tell him the back door is unlocked. That anyone could break into such sadness.

***

The Acrobat makes the dance look effortless. Without the weight of wings, she flies. Streaks the skyline of the tallest circus tent. Bound in a blood-red ribbon of silk, she unravels. Becomes undone. Tumbles towards you. The cops, the cameras, the citizens. Down below, everyone evacuates. Clearing a patch of hard-packed earth for her. There’s no safety net. Suddenly, she stops. Hangs herself by an ankle. Unharmed, the acrobat spreads her arms. TA-DAH! But the onlookers leave, having seen it all before. You promise that she was enough. That your love is enough. She swears it isn’t. Sighs. She really felt it this time. Fame. You tell her they wanted a fall. One more circus catastrophe.

***

The Beast Tamer feeds the menagerie of animals raw, red meat. Refills the empty stock tanks with cool, crisp water. Scrubs the dust and dirt off the elephants. Tousles the winter coat of the black bear. Playing nice, the beast tamer puts on a show for the authorities, the anchormen, the audience. But you know better. Before the accident, his animals were often sedated and starved. Never let loose. You want to be abused. To have that harsh, heavy kind of love. He says you’re feral. Too wild to hold down. You counter that his crime is obvious. That others will see the suffering safari and wonder: where did the meat come from?

***

The Fire Eater buries the evidence deep inside a burn barrel. With blistered and blackened hands, he rains gasoline over the remains. Strikes a match. Ignites a fountain of fire. Inhales the smoke. Singed by the hush of heat, he walks away from the blaze. Burning up. Bejeweled in beads of sweat. You follow. Feverish from head to toe. You vow to keep it all a secret. You won’t tell a soul. Not the rangers, the reporters, the residents—no one. He thanks you, but rejects the thought of romance. With you, it’s just too cold. You ask, if he eats fire, when did he become so scared?

***

The Magician replays and rehearses the old routine. He shuffles the cards, carefully picks the one unknown. Stuffs a rabbit into a top hat. Makes it vanish, then reappear. He saws the pretty girl in-half, but she always comes back together. Every trick he has up his sleeve works. He makes no mistakes. Nothing goes wrong. Yet, something did go wrong. Just once. And they want an explanation. The law, the live broadcast, the locals. You come to his defense. A good magician never reveals his secrets. That’s what you love about him. He begs you to leave. You’re only making it worse. You have no trouble disappearing on your own.

***

The Fortuneteller meets with the ringleader. The acrobat. The beast tamer. The fire eater. The magician. Welcomes them into her sanctuary. A small space—a room crowded by candles. Air thick with the scent of incense. Roses. Beeswax. Something dead. With milk-white eyes, she considers her crystal ball. Translates her Tarot cards. Looks over the lines pressed into palms. She forewarns them of a frightening future. This time, they believe it—before, they had laughed. You believe the fortuneteller. Offer your hand. Ask: is there love between us? She looks. Shakes her head. I see no future with you.

***

You were the brave volunteer. Out of hundreds of outstretched hands, they reached for yours. Chosen, you were carried from the crowd. Brought up on the stage. Held still by the ringleader, the acrobat, the beast tamer, the fire eater, the magician. Electric, the circus performers declared dangerous acts. The swell of sound from the audience—cheers and cries—left you feeling frozen. But you couldn’t have backed out. Not in front of the high-wire. The black bear. The flamethrower. The water-filled tank. You had to play the part. And you did. But before you died in the accident, you looked back at the performers. Thought they all felt it. Love.

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A CHILDHOOD IN FIVE ACTS by Suzanne Craig-Whytock

September 3, 2019 · Fiction

Out back behind the house, there was a rusty old oil drum that Da used late at night for burning stuff. Once Sammy and I found what looked like some kind of animal bones in it, but we didn’t dare ask about the kitten that Sammy had found the week before. This is how I grew up.

I couldn’t help Sammy, I couldn’t save him because he would always cry, even when I whispered, “Don’t cry, don’t.” He couldn’t stop his eyes from leaking like a broken tap, that’s what Da would call him, “Ya fucking little broken tap,” and Sammy would squeeze his eyes together tight, but the more Da yelled at him, the more he cried, and there was nothing I could do about what happened next. This is how I grew up.

I never talked at school, and my clothes and fingernails were dirty. Ms. Carmody would ask, “What’s wrong, Delilah?” but I couldn’t answer because deep inside I liked her, and I couldn’t stand to see her eyes change when she looked at me, like I was a little broken tap too. This is how I grew up.

Once, I got caught in a tree, and Da looked out the back window and saw me hanging there, choking. He ran out and saved me, and then he took off his belt and hit me with the folded leather over and over and over again, yelling, “Stupid bitch, you coulda died,” until I wished I had. But I didn’t cry, I wasn’t like Sammy. This is how I grew up.

Da was Hephaestus, forging us and pounding our wings until we couldn’t fly and we couldn’t remember ever having feathers. Sammy evaporated in the quench, but I got folded into myself and hammered flat over and over and over again until I was hard as Damascus and double-edged and no longer myself. This is how I grew up.

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JUDITH, MOTHER by Matthew Lovitt

August 11, 2019 · Fiction

Judith didn’t want to force the boy, but Jacob refused the chance to be reborn in His image. Willow, the regression therapist, said he suffered a PTSD-like disease, and that simulating a second birth would release him from the trauma of years of processed food, daycare by television. And so she held tight the down blanket wrapped around his body, the mock vaginal lips that parted at the crown of his head. He kicked and screamed, and she whispered that soon they would be together again.

Willow said, Again?

And Judith imagined what it would be like to cut the crusts off of her boy’s sandwiches, chauffeur him to cotillion, and buy him his first semi-automatic weapon—everything that she didn’t get to do for her first Gift. Because God bestowed upon the faithful riches—Judith was a vessel for Him. Perfect posture, tiny steps, shirtsleeves past the wrists.

The boy vomited in his womb, and the therapist considered Judith’s many mounted animal heads—antelope, deer, and ram.

What would you call this room? Willow said.

An office, I guess.

And how many rooms do you have?

Twelve if you count the workshop out back.

Willow whistled a cartoon whistle, as if she was impressed. Judith sensed a twinge of contempt. But the therapist didn’t know how dearly she paid—a dead husband and organs.

Judith forced a smile. I’ve been blessed.

Willow said, It would be better for him to birth into your arms, so that you can wipe away the afterbirth from his eyes, nose, and lips.

But his mess, Judith said.

The first of many, I’m afraid.

She grimaced.

And to have him otherwise could make him upset.

Well I’d rather not.

Who would?

Ruin this blouse, I meant.

In his down womb, Jacob writhed, gagged, and spit.

Judith held the mock-opening against her chest.

Willow reached for the boy.

She yanked him away, shot the therapist a look like you’re next.

He could die, Willow said.

Every life comes with certain risks.

And then Judith hummed a lullaby until Jacob’s life passed through her—water through a sieve. The remnants: tiny deposits of sin. But now the boy was free to enter heaven. Or burn in hell, as God wished. And then Judith lay the boy’s body on the ground, rocked forward to a crouch, and lunged at Willow, pummeled her face and chest. She was surprised by how little blood stained her fists. When the bitch was good and dead, Judith looked over her shoulder to Jacob, and noticed the body fluids seeping through the comforter, blotting the carpet yellow and red.

She muttered, Shit.

Judith dragged Jacob by the feet, to the metal shed out back, and into the storage closet where he and Willow could be stashed. The following day she would dump them in a wastewater pit one county west. The chemical sludge would eat away their skin or at least the fingerprints that might tie her to them. But first, but now, she needed to ask for His forgiveness, receive His wisdom.

Judith sat in the last pew of Calvary Assembly. A gaggle of accordion-shaped matrons gathered near the front of the hall, around Joseph, the preacher, preaching The End. Their task was to hold one another witness to be saved from sin. And it was through such service they might glimpse heaven. Then Joseph said he had to take to the shop his Benz, but there was time if anyone would like to testify their faith to Him. Two women shot to their feet, gave one another a sideways glance.

Judith laughed, lifted her gaze to the heavens, and prayed: God, thank you for saving me. It’s been a long journey, and I’m trying my best, but sometimes I’m not sure if I’m cut out to be in Your service. I know the two followers I delivered to you today were unclean—that woman smelled like cigarettes and likely the boy couldn’t complete a quick slant. For this I ask your forgiveness, and another chance. Please give me a sign: a healthy prospect or a new, functional uterus. Sure every setback is an opportunity, but I’m at the end of my wits.

Judith parked her Escalade two blocks from the elementary. She waited for the last girl to lope down the schools front steps, toward her car, then held out the window a rope of saltwater taffy.

She said, Hungry?

The girl grimaced. Not for your garbage candy.

Judith gasped.

And why are you so creepy?

My word.

Against mine.

I don’t know what you mean, Judith said.

The girl plucked her cellphone from her pocket. Well maybe we should call the police, and see what happens then.

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SLEEPY TIGER by Matthew Bookin

August 9, 2019 · Fiction

Paul started doing deliveries. He was 19 days sober. The passenger side of his car still looked like a carefully crushed soda can. The travel bottle of Listerine was still in his glove box.

Emir’s food truck business had expanded into an actual restaurant. Paul was hired on as their 31-year-old delivery boy. He picked up racks of steamed dumplings from the restaurant and loaded them into the back of his nearly defeated red car. It was early summer and sometimes, mostly on the weekends, he could be out making deliveries until dawn. He felt quiet and newly alive. He was experiencing traffic lights in an honest, gentle way. People smiled at him and tipped with paper money. A woman handed him an apple with a lipstick-lined bite taken from its side. Fire hydrants bled happily into the streets. Strangers seemed mysterious, hungry, and kind. Light rain washed the city dust from his windshield when he couldn’t afford a new jug of electric blue washer fluid.

The sobriety app he’d downloaded offered up an inspirational quote every day. “Be in love with your life. Every minute,” Jack Kerouac told Paul from some place in the past. Paul knew that Jack Kerouac drank himself to death while living in his mother’s guest room. Paul flipped his phone facedown in the passenger seat of his car and imagined a long stem rose floating dumbly in a full bottle of non-alcoholic beer.

When he was wasted, every day was a casino. Now that he was sober, every day was a boardwalk at dawn.

Paul felt good in a fragile way, like an old light bulb that would pop and burn out at any moment. He could barely make eye contact with anyone. He carried mammoth stacks of dumpling trays up marathon flights of apartment complex stairs. He fed lonely people and he fed families. Some doors opened and he’d find himself facing a mirror. He never tried the food.

The feeling he had when he stopped moving was deep and kaleidoscopic. It swirled and absorbed him. It dryly intoxicated. His psychedelic sadness posed no mysteries. It was his belt, looped tightly to the doorknob of the closet. It was circles inside of boxes. Cages and codes. Heart attacks and cracked pitchers of spiked lemonade. Bad vibes he paid for. No giving, just getting. The fifth can of a six-pack. A vast field of patiently unlit green candles arranged like guillotined sunflowers. The “blah blah blah” of his broken heart.

The restaurant closed quickly and sadly. Emir was widely accused of gentrifying the neighborhood, so he shuttered the place and vanished from the city. For a few weeks, every evening after the delivery job died, Paul would buy several cartons of dumplings from a Chinese takeout place next to his Stepmom’s apartment, where he’d been staying. He’d drive around all night long with the unfamiliar dumplings in his backseat, not really going anywhere. His car would smell like scallions forevermore and the wind was getting colder. When the mornings rolled around he’d donate the untouched food to a shelter downtown.

At his very best, he felt like the only man working behind the scenes at a fireworks display.

Six months later, at the conclusion of a particularly cruel day, Paul bought a tall can of Budweiser beer from a gas station lacking a front door. That was pretty much the end of him.

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AS SEEN ON TV by Kyra Kondis

August 8, 2019 · Fiction

Bedazzler

It’s your idea to go as KISS for your first real Halloween party in your freshman year of high school, and of course nobody warns you that your three friends will back out of the costume at the last second. You won’t get their text until your mother drops you off a block away from the party’s actual location. A few weeks before, you’d begged her for the $19.95 you needed to punch plastic rhinestones up and down the legs of too-small black jeans; you have to wear these jeans. It starts to drizzle before you get to the door of the house—everything is always at some rich kid’s stone-sided house, and there are always rigid family photos taken against a cloudy studio backdrop hanging on the wall, and you can never find the bathroom because you’re not used to a house so big—and when you get inside, your thick face paint is dripping down your neck and all three of your friends are nurses in low-cut white smocks. No one offers you a drink, so you make your own, and at the end of the night, Jeremiah Lewis puts his arm around your waist, and his hand brushes against the studs on the seat of your jeans, and he smells like vodka and Sprite when he whispers to you that he always thought clowns were kind of hot.

ShamWow

Your first summer job is a lifeguarding gig at your neighborhood pool, and your first paycheck goes to buying a crop top, bright pink and snug and off-the-shoulder, the kind everyone’s wearing with high-waisted shorts. In front of the mirror, admiring the shock of pink against denim and the way your hair falls over your bare shoulders, you think you look more grown-up now, like a girl who could drive or vote or be in college. You wear the outfit all weekend, pausing to enjoy it every time you pass your reflection in a store window, the glass door at the smoothie place, the side of your parents’ freshly washed car. The following morning at work, an elderly man complains that his lounge chair is wet and hands you his square shammy towel: Be a dear, he says, smiling, and help me wipe this up. Quickly, you flatten the chair, mop the water off the resin-coated wicker, and prop the chair back up, skimming it for extra droplets. When you’re done, the man tells you that he likes that suit you wear, the two-piece red one with the plus-sign on the chest.

Chia Pet

Ryan Daniels is in his first year of college, and it’s over winter break that he asks you out on a date, and of course you say yes because it’s your senior year of high school, and this is how you become somebody. He takes you to the Wendy’s drive-through and parks by the empty lake, so dark and so quiet you can’t believe there’s more city on the other side. You pinch your French fries daintily when you eat them, and you don’t dare dip them in ketchup, and everything feels like part of a movie, either romance or horror, you’re not quite sure. On the floor of the passenger’s side of Ryan’s car, you notice a tan-orange bust of Bob Ross, his green sprout-curls wilting away from his face; you love Bob Ross, you tell Ryan, giddy to make a connection on your mostly-quiet date. You say: you didn’t have much around the house growing up, but you always had paint. Ryan laughs and says he took the dumb thing from his lame little brother. Then he reclines your seat for you and stifles a French-fry burp before his weight covers yours. Wait, you say once, or maybe more than once, but he doesn’t hear you. The lights in the car click off.

Snuggie

In your first year of college, your roommate’s boyfriend makes fun of you when he realizes you have a sleeved blanket; it looks like a bathrobe, he gasps between laughs, or a tent. As the first semester passes, you spend most of your days curled up in it, in your lofted bed where you can always hear your neighbor’s alarm clock go off in the mornings. When your roommate asks if something is wrong, you tell her you’re just cold. But the more class you miss, the more you remember you’re wasting your loans, and the more you waste, the less you see the point of anything at all. One day, your roommate lets her boyfriend take a nap in the room while she goes to intramural soccer practice, and if everything didn’t feel so heavy, it would be hard to drift back to sleep with a near-stranger sprawled out under your roommate’s purple bedspread. It’s as if they’ve forgotten you’re in there, too, or they’ve decided it no longer matters. About an hour after you finally doze off again, a strange sound wakes you up, and you open your eyes to your roommate’s boyfriend holding a photo of something, the purple bedspread moving up and down along with his hand. You shut your eyes again and burrow your arms in your blanket sleeves and wait, your gut coiling. When he’s finished, your roommate’s boyfriend goes to the bathroom, and you open your eyes again. There’s a picture missing from your corkboard, the one of you and your cousin together at the lake the summer before.

OxiClean

Your therapist at the university health center asks if you’re happy, and you say yes. You tell her how your boyfriend took you out last night to your favorite restaurant with the spinach dip and steak frites. You tell her how he told you he loved you. Finally, you think, you’ve done enough for someone to love you. You don’t tell her that when you went back to your apartment, he did it again, the thing where he says he doesn’t expect sex but that it would be foolish for him to be in a relationship without it when there are so many girls who could give it to him. You don’t tell her that you lay there and hoped it would be quicker this time. You don’t tell her that when you got up afterward, you left a red stain behind, small and round like an egg. Your therapist raises her eyebrows, writes something down, says not to be afraid to share the whole story. You answer that you aren’t. When you get home, you pull the soiled sheets from the hamper and attack them with stain remover, scrubbing at the spot in the middle. This is the most energy you’ve had in weeks. You run the sheets through a rinse until the stain is gone, and looking at the newly clean fabric, you wonder how to tell what’s real. You’d know for sure, you decide, if you’d really been wronged.

Right?

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COYOTES by Dan Crawley

August 6, 2019 · Fiction

I find myself fading under ballooning khakis, a parachuting buttoned-down shirt. I let myself in Big Sis’s place through an open sliding glass door. Last time, I found a bundle of twenties in a kitchen cabinet drawer, next to the stove. I ripped out most of the blue paper from a pad on the counter, keeping a few twenties on top of the rubber-banded roll. This time, a million paper clips and batteries like polished coins and plastic measuring spoons litter the bottom of the drawer. I could weep four ounces.

Then I hear another’s weeping and I see Big Bro letting himself in the front door, his crying toddler in tow. My nephew is held like a football on his father’s hip, most likely adding to his uproar. Big Bro stares at my damp forehead, chin, and wonders, “How do you have a key?” I tell him I got an extra the same time he did, a lie. He wonders also, “So what are you doing here?” I tell him I’m retrieving money Big Sis owes me, another lie. He tells me, “I brought over this screaming meemie because I’ve got somewhere to go…for…something, something, and Big Sis is babysitting. Where are you, Big Sis?” I tell him she is not home from work yet, and I’ve got somewhere to go with the money owed to me, for something, something. “My somewhere is more important than your somewhere,” he points out. I can’t help but point out Big Bro’s clammy expression, too. So he points out also, “My something, something is more urgent than whatever your something, something is.” I tell him to gaze upon my shrunken sack of skin, trapped at the bottom of a desolate gulch, and beg for a few bucks. Big Bro tells me, “Someone with a high-powered, corner-office set up like you should have a bank vault full of money for your something, something.” I beg for forty bucks, which could work. Then Big Bro remembers, “I left my truck running.” I tell Big Bro I’m incapable of watching his son as he performs a flawless hand-off of the screaming meemie to the futon on his way out. I pace in tight circles. My hair bristles.

My nephew thrashes all over the futon, his yowl a loose fan belt. So I start yowling a pitiful wheeze. Down in a dried-out creek bed, a thicket of cholla cacti hemming me in. I can’t stay on my feet any longer and collapse onto the edge of the futon and curl up. Big Sis won’t even know I’m here. Just a pile of clothes left by her boyfriend. My nephew stands like a boozer and clutches my billowing shirt and yowls into my ear. Next comes the pounding. Both of us go silent. We hear Big Sis’s uproar on the other side of the door, “I don’t know how you coyotes got in, but I’ve called animal control and the cops to get you out.” My nephew growls. Now that I can do.

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NEW CORNERS by Alexondria Jolene

August 5, 2019 · Fiction

The ocean goes unseen. Water scares her, she chokes as she sips it.

She stays in her room while new people load in. It happens every few days. The room doesn’t have a window. The feeling of waves make her sick; she can’t stand to look at them in motion. A tiny pastel painting of a palm tree reminds her of one she saw in a doctor’s office as a child.

Coiled on her bed, the silence strains her ears until horns and fireworks make tiny explosions. They sound small. They sound far. She steps into the hallway for some boxed cranberry juice. Frozen rats fill the ice machine, their cold blood dripping onto the floor. “It’s not what you think,” a man whispers behind her.

Guests are brought to the bingo room just before dinner. She’s the only one who actively plays. No one else even cares to win. Hardly any of them move their pieces. They don’t finish.

In the dining hall, no one sits next to her. “You smell gross,” says an older man.

“Your hair looks like a moldy spider’s nest,” says another.

“I’m lovely,” she says to them.

As she stands in line for a tray of food, she realizes it’s not the buffet she imagined. Employees in tan uniforms hand her applesauce for dessert. She doesn’t like applesauce, but that’s all they serve her. It’s free, so she takes it, but she doesn’t like it.

The other guests get mad at the ones in uniforms. They throw their applesauce, dumping their meals onto the dull floor. She grabs another man’s cheesecake right off of his tray. “You don’t want this cheesecake with your motion sickness, do you, sir? Surely you can’t hold it down with these rough waters.” The man doesn’t respond; he’s slouched over in his chair, his emesis bucket tilted over on his lap.

A man in his late thirties, with hair not thinning at all, rushes down the hallway. His finger lacks a wedding ring. He wants me, she thinks.

***

An employee in a tan uniform removes her empty food tray and leads her into a small office. The man without a wedding ring tells her to undress. She screams. The employees in tan carry her to her room.

She sits on her bed, watching the pastel painting. The palm leaves sway. They fall to the ground, becoming waves. Confident in the patch behind her ear, she walks up the painting and removes it from the wall. Behind it, a porthole, waves crashing against it. She falls to the ground and begins to wretch. Thawing rats roll into her room.

“Your last pill, dear. It’s time for you to leave,” the man without a wedding ring tells her. He hands her a small blue pill. She notices his badge for the first time. The pill dissolves in her warm hand.

“I’ve been wanting to switch rooms for a while now,” she replies. “But please, nothing with a window. I’m scared of water. No paintings, either.”

“You’ve run out of financial assistance,” he says.

“I don’t want any more applesauce,” she says. “My daughter needs to come pick me up. There’s a rat problem. Let me call her.”

He looks at an employee in tan clothes. “I thought her chart said she has no kids?” he says.

“She doesn’t,” the employee replies.

The man without a ring bends down to the woman’s level. “You have no kids,” he says.

“When my daughter was seven, I told her to put me on a cruise instead of a nursing home,” she says. “But this isn’t the right cruise. I don’t like the paintings here.”

“This is a senior behavioral health unit at the community hospital. You have run out of government assistance. We have to discharge you. I hope you find somewhere to stay.”

***

The employee in tan walks the woman through a lobby she doesn’t remember seeing on the way in. A reflection in the mirrored wall stares at her. Small, wrinkled, dreadlocks to her breasts. Gross, she thinks. That woman is disgusting. The reflection dances alongside her until she reaches the sliding doors.

The employee in tan walks her outside and lets go of her hand.

“The corner of 68th and Havenway is mine,” says a lady sitting on the curb.

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